The Guesthouse, as the sign proclaimed it, ended up being an inn. It was also one of the only buildings I could see that was made with the stature of a creature of our size in mind. Despite being one of the few odd buildings out, the establishment was nearly packed with gnomes drinking potent, but fruity smelling, alcohol. The scent of the drinks hit me even before we made it through the doors. Even stronger than the smell of alcohol was the scent of rich, yeasty bread. I could practically taste the slightly nutty loaves from the fragrant aroma. My mouth watered; my stomach growled.

Sabin took care of arranging our lodging and got us a table by getting two other gnome parties to sit together and let us have one of the larger sized booths. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to that, because my eyes were roving the tables and checking what kind of food was on offer. Before I knew it I had a bowl of stew, two loaves of bread, and a flagon of mead. The conversation of other tables, and even my own table, were lost on me while I eagerly ladled pieces of meat and veggies onto bread and devoured it.

It wasn’t the best food I’d ever eaten, but an entire day of arena work had left me on the edge of starvation, and I ate with glee. Apparently this was exactly how the gnomes expected a dragonoid to eat food. I felt the eyes of the whole common room on me while I devoured three bowls of stew and five loaves of bread. It would have been more impressive if the portions hadn’t been sized for gnomes.

“Ever heard of a concept called Gizmo, Lord Emery?” Sven caught my attention now that my ravenous hunger had been sated. He had barely touched his own bowl of stew, and the young gnome practically vibrated with excitement. He’d probably been eagerly waiting for me to finish, or even hoped I’d enkindle his concept before I ate. I felt slightly bad for him.

I let my mind wander through the vast sea of concepts in the back of my mind.

“Gadgetry, technology. Is that the concept you want enkindled, and to which attribute?” I let my eyes fall on Sven, and noted he only had one enkindled concept, illusion magic. His uncle also had illusion magic bound to the same attribute, essence. I took a quick peak at nearby gnomes at other tables, and realized it was a racial thing. Every gnome I looked at had illusion magic bound to essence, or a variation of illusion magic.

“Agility!” Sven chimed in immediately, and Sabin gave his nephew an approving nod.

“Alright,” I mumbled and pictured the idea of gizmo. It looked like a ball of wires, pipes, and little gears, and transferring it to Sven’s agility went off without a hitch. The little gnomes eyes grew wide as the techno-ball bound itself to him in a flash of astral flame, and the growth of an enkindled concept bolstered him physically.

“Could you enkindle masquerade to my strength, too?” Sven asked with big, puppy dog eyes. The adolescent gnome really knew how to work the I’m a tiny harmless gnome angle, but I didn’t see any real harm in it. He already had illusion like his kin, so how much worse could masquerade be?

I let my mind drift, searching for the concept. I expected something favored by actors, or bored nobles. Instead, I found a concept beloved by spies, assassins, and thieves. Masquerade was all about being something or someone else, being unnoticed, and had a nefarious and slightly sinister feel to it. Even more disturbing was that the young lad had a high affinity for it.

“I can, but you aren’t going to do anything bad with it, are you?” I made it a point to smile with the question, showing off the draconic fangs that could mangle his tiny body in a few hard chomps.

“Of course not, Lord Emery, but if I did, I would make sure it wasn’t to any of your friends first.” Sven didn’t seem to notice my attempt at intimidation, and he excitedly proclaimed he wouldn’t mess with my friends. I felt a little out of my depth on what I should do here, so I looked to his uncle Sabin.

Sabin nodded in approval, a look of pride for his nephew on display. I checked Sabin’s concepts. Bound to strength he had The Action, in agility he had The House, vitality had Eye for Talent, and in essence he had illusion magic. I didn’t have a clue what most of those concepts were, but when I tried to sense them, it quickly became apparent they were all related to gambling, or skills that would let him have an edge in gambling and running the arena.

“Okay then,” I said and bound masquerade, which was symbolized by a golden mask, to Sven’s strength.

After that Sabin brought over a couple of other young gnomes who also wanted trickery-based concepts bound. I spent an hour or so enkindling concepts for gnomes, until Remy stepped in with overly dramatic yawns and a request to see our lodging for the night.

We got one large room to share. It had six beds, but we only used three. Four if you count Chrys sitting atop the bed lost in her thoughts using a bed. Gneisslings didn’t sleep, although Chrys made it sound like they did enjoy periods of down time to let their minds wander. The beds were slightly smaller than I would have preferred and reminded me that I was a different person than I had once been.

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My horns, protrusions, and even some of my normal scales, caught on the soft sheets. If I wasn’t extremely careful of how I moved I would wake up in a rat’s nest of destruction. I couldn’t get comfortable, and every time I shifted even slightly, the bed groaned under my weight. I wasn’t sure how much I weighed, but I tried three different beds to make sure it wasn’t just one poorly constructed bed. They all groaned under my weight. Even Chrys didn’t have that problem, and she was made from rocks.

“Your current weight is five hundred and eleven pounds. Your musculature and body continue to adjust and evolve to that of a Tenebrous Dragon. When you achieve the rank of Legate as my envoy, you will receive the Cloak of Gadreel for your efforts. “Doubtlessly your mass will increase again,” Arx Maxima explained some of my idle questions into my mind.

Who was Gadreel? Who had Diana been? I wondered about the identities of Arx Maxima’s envoys of old, but also about their willingness to be tied to the Stellarae Enclave. Had they all been these Tenebrous Dragons to start with, or had they transformed into one like I had, by the power of Arx Maxima?

“Gadreel attained the rank of Emissary in my service, one of the first to do so. He was a master of war, a brilliant tactician, and brought five stellar empires into the fold, and added nearly a thousand planets to the material vaults during his tenure.” Arx Maxima answered my unspoken questions while I tried to find a comfortable way to sleep.

Emissary? That’s after Legate?

“Delegate, Herald, Legate, Envoy, Emissary, Ambassador, Consul.” Arx Maxima reminded me of the hierarchy of rank for her envoys. I had a lot of ranks to go, since I was a lowly herald.

The ranks reverberated and echoed through my mind, and I finally fell asleep. I dreamed unpleasant dreams. My pale, human skin melted off, and I glued dragonscales onto my exposed flesh. A greedy fox sought to steal one of my scales, constantly after the pile whenever I went to glue one on. Somewhere down the hallway Etienne cursed my name, telling me to quit sobbing and grow up already. Mom and Dad whispered in concern to one another of the ever changing personality of my younger brother.

A shapely lavender index finger ran from the tip of my right horn, down to my cheek. Implacable strength that I couldn’t resist shifted my view, my vision filled with the large gem-faceted red eyes of Amaranthine Sadow. Her face grew larger and larger, as she leaned in. She didn’t kiss me, but instead ran her tongue along my ear, which was almost hidden behind the two horns. Amaranthine must have had a very long tongue, and my reaction to that almost caused me to miss what she whispered into my ear.

“Lex Talionis,” Amaranthine whispered, and her hands pushed my back down on a bed of hard vines. The vines gave slightly, but held against our weight as the Fey climbed astride me.

“I don’t know what that means,” I said. Frankly, I didn’t care what it meant. My eyes slowly descended from Amaranthine’s glowing eyes to her unclothed body, ready to devour her beauty. Yet when she spoke, my eyes were forced back up to the way her lips shaped the words, the way her tongue darted between her teeth to curl and enunciate.

“Lex Talionis,” she repeated each time my eyes almost made it to her exposed chest, and each time my eyes were forced back to her face. Like torture, the cycle ended only when a strong stone hand touched my shoulder and shook me awake.

“Lex Talionis,” I muttered and Chrys’s body shook the same way my own had, under the strength of her blue-green hand.

“Are you alright?” Chrys’s voice held a tone of slight worry.

I glanced at the bed, which I had indeed ruined. The wooden frame had broken under my thrashing, and the sheets and bedding had been annihilated by the sharpness of my body. I groaned in frustration, a lot of kinds of frustration, and kept the shredded blanket over my lower body to protect some small sliver of my dignity.

“Yeah,” I croaked out with a hoarse voice. “Had some dreams, that’s all.”

“Gneisslings do not dream,” Chrys said lightly. “What is it like?”

“Torture,” I answered without thinking. “No, not torture. All the little things in the back of your mind that haunt you throughout the day like to remind you of themselves at night. Sometimes I think I’m seeing things elsewhere, and sometimes maybe it is just a dream. I don’t have the ability to tell them apart yet.”

“That sounds unpleasant,” Chrys said empathetically.

“What do you do while we sleep?” I asked. Did she simply spend the night thinking and staring into space quietly while we slept?

“I work on advancing my concepts. I wish to reach Citrine as quickly as possible, so that I might be of more use to you and Arx Maxima, Monados, and Subterra,” Chrys’s tone had a genuine honesty that put me a little bit at ease. I don’t know what I or Arx Maxima had done to earn her trust or loyalty, but the fact she put us on equal footing with her home was the best compliment she could give me.

“How much progress have you made?” I asked, wondering if she had gotten ahead of me in the drive to citrine.

“I have seven more abilities to unlock, but the three of you slosh so loudly in your sleep that it has slowed down my acquisitions,” Chrys answered me in a teasing way, but there was just an edge of annoyance to her tone to suggest that she might also be serious. Did the water of our bodies really make that much of a racket to the strange senses of the Gneisslings?

“Have you considered crafting some earmuffs?” I asked with a little sigh. She was ahead of me. I had nine more abilities to unlock. No, I had eight more to unlock. A third ability had crystalized at one of the points of the pentagon that was Envoy. Lex Talionis had joined Summon Delirium of Ruin and Instincts of the Gossamyr to round out my strength-based abilities. I let my mine embrace the ability and sought to understand how it worked.

It might as well have been named Retaliation or Reflect. It allowed me to turn enemy’s attacks against them.

“Have you considered sloshing less?” Chrys asked me with the same exasperation I asked her about earmuffs with. At least she hadn’t singled me out and said I sloshed more than Claire or Remy.